See the Prawer Plan map Israel's government was keeping secret

Former minister Benny Begin, who helped draft the Prawer Plan, denies saying Israel’s Bedouin support the plan: How could they if they never even saw it?

(Click the map to enlarge.)

Map of the planned land confiscation and compensation as part of the Begin-Prawer Plan (Image: Courtesy of MK Dov Khenin).Legend:Light blue: Jewish townOrange: Bedouin municipalityPurple: To be expropriated by the stateGreen outline: Land to be given to unrecognized villagesRed outline: Land for other uses (pasture, etc.)

Until now, nobody knew the extent of the Prawer-Begin Plan. No government official or statement has detailed how many Bedouin citizens will be displaced, how many unrecognized villages razed and how much land will be expropriated by the state.

MK Dov Khenin (Hadash) on Monday published a copy of a map distributed to members of the Knesset Interior Affairs Committee. The map was prepared by the Prime Minister’s Office for Housing Minister Uri Ariel of the Jewish Home party in an attempt to assuage his party’s fears that too much land would be given to the Bedouin.

According to a report published yesterday on +972, the new map details plans to displace some 40,000 Bedouin and for the state to expropriate 250,000 dunams (61,700 acres) of Bedouin land.

“The government hid this map from the Bedouin. The government hid this map from the Knesset,” MK Khenin wrote on his Facebook page.

It was not clear whether the map was merely an explanatory document meant to swing votes in the Knesset or an actual working document for the eventual implementation of Prawer. MK Merav Michaeli wrote on Twitter Monday afternoon, “[I]t seems the doc the gov presented isn’t the original doc, the gov is still hiding the original and why the changes.”

Another central figure in the formulation of the Prawer-Begin Plan, half of its namesake, former minister Benny Begin, sent a surprising letter to the Knesset Interior Affairs Committee on Monday.

Coalition leader Yariv Levin (Likud) has insinuated and declared that Begin told him the Bedouin community supports the Prawer Plan, or at least that it is a compromise they would accept.

Begin on Monday refuted that he ever made such statements, writing, “I have never said to anyone that the Bedouin accept my plan.”

He couldn’t have made such a claim, he explained, because he never even presented the Bedouin community with his plan, “and therefore I could not have heard their reactions to it.”

“[Because] I was not able to know their level of support for the law, it therefore follows that I couldn’t say that I know anything about their support for the law.”

In addition to Levin’s now-contested Begin quote, Israeli government spokespeople have responded to anti-Prawer protests in recent weeks by making an unsubstantiated claim that 80 percent of the Bedouin population supports the Prawer-Begin Plan.

“How can you claim that 80 percent of the Bedouin population accepts the Prawer Plan when the most basic information about he plan is hidden even from members of Knesset who are voting on it, and certainly hiding from the Bedouin in the Negev,” anti-Prawer activist Huda Abu-Obaid said on Monday.

“Now it won’t be possible to hide behind vague statements about a plan ‘for the benefit of the Bedouin’,” added another activist, Fadi Elobra. “These documents show anyone who wants to see that this is a plan that will bring about the expulsion of at least 40,000 people from their homes and the expropriation of most of the land under Bedouin ownership in the Negev.”

The activists called on Knesset members to listen to them and their objections to Prawer, vowing to continue protesting against it until the dozens of unrecognized villages in the Negev are recognized and connected to state infrastructure.

LEAVE A COMMENT

COMMENTS

Mikesailor

MondayDecember 9, 2013

I keep wondering how far the pre-WWII analogies continue? The Prawer Plan is Lebensraum by another name: offering merely government confiscation of land without any legal recourse by the Bedouin; no or inadequate compensation and the herding of the population into government-sanctioned cantons. Note that these Bedouin are Israeli citizens, yet were not consulted or given the ability to have any input into the creation of such plans; the ability to either modify or change this ‘sone deal’. All for the “Jewish’ population, nothing for the non-Jew in an attempt to create a “Greater Israel”; one which historically never existed.

Reply to Comment

Tomer

MondayDecember 9, 2013

This plan is ridiculously beneficial for the Beduin. At the moment, all 8 million citizens of Israel inhabit about 1 million dunams of land. Now, the 40,000 relocating beduin will recieve 250,000 dunams. That’s ALOT, ALOT, ALOT more than Jews receive from the state.
In fact, this plan will allow 40,000 beduin to occupy the same land space as 2 million citizens. The plan also gives the beduin extra compensation as well.

Reply to Comment

Average American

MondayDecember 9, 2013

This plan also doesn’t allow the Bedouin to participate in its formation. So much for the Democratic part of the Jewish and Democratic State of Israel.

Reply to Comment

Average American

TuesdayDecember 10, 2013

You’re comparing city dwellers to agricultural fields. Of course the fields are ALOT bigger than your city apartment balcony. You’re misleading.

Reply to Comment

Average American

MondayDecember 9, 2013

Yes absolutely lebensraum. For one pure race.

It couldn’t be more obvious but it is being re-defined as other words, other reasons.

The similarities (walls with snipers, deadzones between barbed fences, checkpoints, ghettos for unpure “outsiders”, nationalism fed by militarism) are so many it makes you wonder if the Jews had a part in the Nazi strategy.

Patton had some things to say about that, and he was killed.

So were any German officers killed who might have disproved the Holocaust story in the Jewish-led witch hunt “Nuremburg Trials” which were a mockery of legal court procedures.

Reply to Comment

Esteban

TuesdayDecember 10, 2013

And the fact that the Bedouin have not participated in the plan makes it an absolute lebenraum? Stop trivializing terms. the plan is stupid and undemocratic, but gives to the bedouins a lot of land in the same region of the Negev all with property rights recognised by the state, also gives the ability to maintain their rural lifestyle and have basic services that previously do not had. The new cities are NOT exclusive to Jews. So, Lebenraum? Stop being so dumbass

Reply to Comment

Average American

TuesdayDecember 10, 2013

I think what people are reacting to is why move the Bedouin from where they are? Why not provide basic services where they are? Why not give them property rights where they are? Why not do all those nice things exactly where they are?

Because your people want to live where they are?

It’s hard to believe your new cities would not be exclusively Jewish when all your other new cities have IDF or stone-throwing settlers keeping non-Jews away. Why don’t you move there with them and build the new city together? The fact that you want non-Jews to move away before you build it shows it is already exclusively Jewish. That’s lebensraum.

Reply to Comment

mike panzone

FridayDecember 13, 2013

excellent point…if the israelis are so hell bent on developing that area, let them develop it…with the bedouin. israelis of every race and religion can stay and be part of the new town.

Reply to Comment

Joel

TuesdayDecember 10, 2013

@972 editors

“Patton had some things to say about that, and he was killed.”

Unless this cretinous gutter anti-Semite, Average American, is severely moderated, I am out of this blog.

Show some stones please.

Reply to Comment

Philos

TuesdayDecember 10, 2013

District 9 must become a mandatory movie in Israeli schools. It’s uncanny. And yes I’m aware that District 9 is a sci-fi allegory of historic apartheid in South Africa as well as the xenophobia towards Zimbabwean refugees. But if the shoe fits…

Reply to Comment

SUBSCRIBE

OUR WEEKLY NEWSLETTER

I am a writer, journalist, commentator, critic and skeptic based in Israel. I am the managing editor at +972 Magazine and previously worked as the news desk manager for The Jerusalem Post‘s online edition.

About +972 Magazine

+972 is an independent, blog-based web magazine. It was launched in August 2010, resulting from a merger of a number of popular English-language blogs dealing with life and politics in Israel and Palestine.

+972 is an independent, blog-based web magazine. It was launched in August 2010, resulting from a merger of a number of popular English-language blogs dealing with life and politics in Israel and Palestine.